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Outsourcing Laws

The job industry is a rough place for many people look for jobs and even more so for business owners looking for an employee to match their needs. Often businesses turn to outsourcing work to other companies to help pick up the slack. Many times people ask what is outsourcing and can employees face job loss due to outsourcing and other questions wanting to know if outsourcing is legal. These can range from what is outsourcing, my job is being outsourced, and is outsourcing legal. When a person is faced with situations like these, they can turn to Experts for insights or solutions. Listed below are five for the top Outsourcing questions answered by the Experts.

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is contracting with another company or person to do a particular function. Almost every organization outsources in some way. Typically, the function being outsourced is considered non-core to the business. The outside firms that are providing the outsourcing services are third-party providers, or as they are more commonly called, service providers.

Is it legal for a outsourcing company to lay off an employee for tardiness

A company or a person in management can end or terminate an employment relationship for any reason that they see fit at any given time. Therefore, an owner can fire a worker for their poor tardiness problems or any customer complaints. Although outsourcing companies do not have to supply employees with employment unless they have a business contract. This may not be fair but it is a status of at-will employment.

Why is there so much outsourcing of manufacturing jobs when the USA has the skilled labor?

The outsourcing is a simple matter of cost. If the work can be done, even 85% as well in some other country that requires significantly less in terms of pay, then it's cheaper to build there, even after shipping. Many times, the people performing the work internally for the client firm are transferred and become employees for the service provider.

Can someone sue his or her employer for outsourcing the individual’s position to another country?

The individual cannot legally sue the company, except if they had a legal agreement of employment, saying that the only way the individual could lose their position is for a specific cause. Other than that, the individual can be fired for any reason at any time. Outsourcing is not illegal and is the sole discretion of the company.

If a party’s company is outsourcing jobs overseas, in order to avoid paying compensation they are systematically given employees bad reviews and eventually firing the employee. Do these employees have any rights?

A company that has chosen to outsource its work load at their own will terminate any employee’s employment at any given time. Most states practice employment at will, so that protects the company from being legally binding to provide employment to an employee regardless of the reason. However, the company cannot discharge an employee based on sex, age, or race.

Business process outsourcing encompasses call center outsourcing, human resources outsourcing (HRO), finance and accounting outsourcing, and claims processing outsourcing. These outsourcing deals involve multi-year contracts that can run into hundreds of millions of dollars. Outsourcing is a very diverse topic and can even be a political debate. Outsourcing brings many questions to the table for many that want answers. Questions are often a broad variety, such as; is outsourcing legal, my job is being outsourced is this legal, and job loss due to outsourcing what can one do to save their job. Experts can be of help with fast and effective answers.

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Hi-I live and work in a small office in PA for a large company. My company is based in NJ and we are going through a re-org. They will be offering some people positions, the remaining ones will have to re-apply for whatever available jobs are left. The company does have an existing severance policy, but we are hearing they are trying to do everything possible NOT to have to pay out on this. For those of us in PA, our fear is that we will be given jobs located in NJ. If we refuse to move and take these NJ jobs- can they deny paying us severance pay?

I live in the state of KY, where I work as a telecom/network technician for an out of state professional staffing service called Outsource Telecom LLC. They have had me on a temp-perm contract with a company called BlackBox for the last 3 years. Recently, I have been put in some situations that are flat out uncalled for. My lead from BlackBox is to assign me tickets daily and I am to dispatch and complete these tickets. Recently, I have been unable to get into contact with my lead, I have been trying to get ahold of him via phone calls, texts, emails etc to no avail. No one seems to want to answer, as I had a problem where I was scheduled to be in 2 places on high priority work on the same day around the same time so it was impossible. After a week of attempts, he finally got it covered. Now, I've been put on another contract where I am not receiving anything that I need to complete my work, I am being told that I have a deadline to meet by Friday or I'll be fired, yet they all know the work can't be completed without me having the proper supplies. I have contacted my actual employer Outsource about all of this, (even in the past some of the same things) and they disregard it and tell me I need to talk with my Blackbox lead. I feel I am being targeted, and set up to fail. This all seems to have gotten worst after I "outshined" one of the Blackbox team members. After that, my lead from Blackbox will hardly ever take my calls, will not provide me with needed materials, will not get me the things/help I need when I need it, constantly rejects my attempts to contact etc. I can't do my job anymore because I don't have any means to do it! As I don't want to have on my record I was fired (even though it would be NO fault of my own) I am thinking about just leaving the company all together. My concern is, would I be able to draw unemployment until I can find work? Either way, because of the lack of help and needed materials, I will not be able to complete my work by friday and I will either be fired or I can leave due to the feeling of retaliation after "outshining" the actual Blackbox employee. I can't seem to understand KY unemployment, and i've never used it before. Also, would it seem I would have any rights to sue Outsource for not providing me with any assistance regarding THEIR client?

My company is in California. I would like to outsource some work. This potential person does not live in California. She is a resident of the state of Wisconsin and will be working from her home. I usually have enough work for 20-30 hours a week and will not have control over when she would clock in or out. I assign work for the week and she works at her own pace to finish up when and what she can. Do I have to pay WI UI and SDI taxes and file payroll taxes for WI? Or how does this work? Will this person get tax from CA and WI?

In construction (electrical contractors) , if an employer currently has only active jobs going, is he allowed to outsource part of the work to an independent electrician instead of having his hourly W2 employees work it? His W2 employees are capable of doing the work being outsourced. Instead they are sitting home and not being paid? This is in California.

hello I have a question regarding my current employment where I learned from the meeting invite which my boss shared with the VP that he is trying to lay off me with my salary information. Can I sue him for that?JA: Because employment law varies from place to place, can you tell me what state this is in?Customer: my job is based out of CTJA: Has anything been filed or reported?Customer: noJA: Anything else you want the lawyer to know before I connect you?Customer: I just need to know if this is a law suit or not if anything can be done

1) I work in Michigan. My employer outsourced our FMLA to a company called Morning Star. They over see the approval for all FMLA. Every time i have to certify they try to get my doctor to reduce the amount of time she has put down. What is the law on this. Do they have the right to do this ? I talked to a legal group that said that if they don't like my doctors prognoses that they have to set up an appointment for me to see there doctor. If that doesn't satisfy both parties then a third and neutral doctors findings are binding.2) This last time I certified, they denied my fmla and sighted 4 things that were they didn't like on my paper work. the only thing that changed this time was my doctor was giving more time off. I can understand that they wanted clarification as to why more time. They signed off on the other 3 areas in question on many other certifications. Doesn't this set a president. How can they legally ask me to change something that they previously OKed.Thank you for any advice

Hello,I have an odd situation. I currently am employed by company ABC. Company ABC provides outsourced services for company XYZ. Company XYZ has recently announced it is discontinuing the contract with company ABC.I am a member of their Senior "key management" team, but am under no specific contract restrictions.The client, company XYZ, has offered to pay bonuses to company ABC during the contract termination for company XYZ NOT to offer us alternative employment after the contract ends. This is due to company XYZ wanting to hire all employees and Senior Leadership to work directly for company XYZ without having competition of offers or loss of key management personnel.Can my company, ABC, really prevent me from being hired into a like/similar or vacant position internally so that I have to entertain an offer of employment from company XYZ? It doesn't seem fair to me. (Although may be perfectly legit, I'm just not sure)Kurtis

I work for an outsourcing company that is supporting another company's IT. My job is working with Legal, security and HR and providing them either active copies of mail files for their review or coordinating historical restores. As part of my processing of the mail files I run a couple of agents, one to remove encryption on documents and one to remove return receipts. I recently had a situations where there were a number of documents that the return receipt marking wouldn't remove. I did everything I could but no go. I notified the request the database was ready for their review. A couple of things to note, this file was a little outside the norm as because the file is in a different country I couldn't put the file onto a US server that is dedicated and for the most part isolated. So this file, though a different copy of the production file is on a production system different from the production server and the access to the database is limited, which is normal.Once the investigator access the file ad did whatever the investigator does, some how, the production owner was bcc'd on an email forwarded form the copied database and sent and email in response to the investigator.When this happened they contacted me to ask if I'd followed the process and I explained that I did but there were seemingly some ghost documents that nothing I could do would remove the return receipt setting. They asked me to remove, from the production mail file the documents from the investigator. I took a snapshot and asked if these two documents were what they wanted removed and they confirmed so I did. I didn't do an in-depth analysis at that time, but I did mention that it didn't look like the document was a return receipt.It was left after that phone call that I would contact the vendor of the product and get their information on these document types and if they could have generated a return receipt and how could the owner have been bcc'd.A day later something hit the fan and I was removed from the environment. My manager explained that they were too emotional this this time and it was only temporary but I was still to continue working on the root cause. With what I information I had I got a number answers and all state the documents in questions could not have generated a return receipt. That a return receipt would never put a name in the bcc field, that would have to be done purposefully.At this point I've been removed for over a week and there is a rumor that I'm no longer not he accountMy expectation is that while they won't fire me for cause I will get layed off.My concern with this is that since this is being handled, in my opinion, very poorly that some how I'm at risk of some sort to court action, if not now in the future.Let me know what you think.

If Union takes dues plus working dues and it's members that they do not receive a pension or have rights to a pension, they only receive rep representation. Is this true and nothing in the by law's about it. It was just that their members for that site, they're represents voted to discontinued it with the employer with a old contract, but when paying dues, to a local union give in they dues some sort of pension in they dues plus they also take it out in working dues? Also if you're layoff they're not going to help you seek another job, doesn't seem to have any rights as a member of this union, because I have been told it's to keep employees inline. Which this union has a contact with a contractor that's managed it's site of a customer and plus it's other employees which really works directly for them. It's seems that we all are being taken advantage of being in a union, without being able to be represented fairly. I believe we need outside help , that should look into this matter, because it a lot of money being taken from it members and a advantage for an employer, which is outsourcing it's site, to another company, but receiving all the befits of control of a union. They're employees which they have from the union also, they're working directly for there company. Shouldn't we have some benefit of this union in some form of a pension? It's noticeable a difference that a union would sell this in a contract to do away with a pension for the employer and still take working dues?

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